


Hell is Other People

by maydei



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Actually I have several things and all of them are staring me in the face. Carry on., Ambiguity, Blasphemy, Canon Compliant, Canon Dialogue, Extended Metaphors, Hell, I know what I did. I know I have a thing. Don't @ me., Lucifer & Lilith Mythology, M/M, Mythology References, Other, Ravage Anthology, Reincarnation, Supernatural Elements, The Divine Comedy, Theology, dante's inferno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maydei/pseuds/maydei
Summary: He falls. In the beginning. In the end.This time comes somewhere in the middle.





	Hell is Other People

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the play 'No Exit' by Sartre, in which he described the quote: 
> 
> _"Hell is other people" has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because… when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves… we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves._
> 
> And that seemed especially fitting for Will and Hannibal and their interpretations of not being able to truly know someone unless they love them, which has locked them in a sort of cyclical Hellscape within canon, where they are the cause of their own eternal suffering. It also fit my theme, which was Hell/Lucifer. Given the extended meta regarding Hannibal as the devil, this seemed the natural progression of things. But if Hannibal is the devil, where does that leave Will?
> 
> This fic is introspective and somewhat open-ended as to who is right in regards to their reality. I'll leave it up to you, my readers.

He falls. In the beginning. In the end.

This time comes somewhere in the middle.

He lands in Palermo not with broken bones, but a broken heart; broken wings of social graces fractured, leaving him with sharp edges that very nearly make him rude. Impulsive to a fault. Aggressive in a way he has not been since his adolescence, in the days of fire and blood. The threads of his adopted humanity have started to unravel—the seams that contain something greater are now coming undone.

It feels as though he has been alive for an eternity. Born inside the brightest light of the sun—so he shone, glittered and gleamed. Held in the highest regard, most respected, most holy. Reborn in the guise of a man much the same.

It is not an exaggeration to say he has fallen from grace yet again. It is a simple truth to say that he’s furious about it.

Hannibal loses himself in art and architecture; in those rare, fine things that humanity has to offer. Little glimpses of genius through the divine, the greatness of eras long since past, and never again reached in this age of nonbelievers and heretics. Heathens. Each of his footsteps on stone echo with the weight of a hundred years. A thousand. 

And yet, these steps are taken alone. Hannibal is here, condemned to beautiful solitude in the land he loves most, without the one he—

Loved. Loves?

The wrath that lives inside his heart knows no direction. Hannibal can no more strike out at Will from here than he can embrace him. He is abandoned. Disowned. And the feelings that churn inside the blazing fire that might be called a soul cannot be defined as positive or negative. They simply _ are, _ and they are _ strong. _

Beneath the veneer of civility and light is something wounded. It cries for its fellow as he traverses city streets, shrieks with pain as he crosses the thresholds of the cathedral he has long regarded as most beautiful: Cappella Palatina, floor clean and no longer graven with the etchings of Hannibal’s memory. As Hannibal stands alone before the ancient altar, something equally primordial digs its claws into the cage of his bones. Samael, Lucifer—there are many names. All of them become him.

Hannibal cannot deny his nature. He cannot deny himself the way Will has so carelessly denied him.

Thrice, now. Thrice, Will has denied him. Upon their meeting, after the ordeal of his imprisonment, and now. 

Hannibal has never allowed any to live that denied him even _ once, _ and yet, Will—

But what else can he do? Even the attempt to sever this bond between them has been unsuccessful. Hannibal could not bring himself to claim Will’s life; only to forcibly demand Will’s penance in shades of red. Flashes of history between them, spanning back to the very beginning—auburn curls, the flesh of an apple, the raw flesh of man, and the crimson of life and death entwined.

Once, they had been joyous. A marriage of mutual respect, of fierce freedom, of loving children. At the time, it had been stolen from them. Hannibal only wanted to return what was taken; give back to his beloved what he could give. A reunion. A new beginning. A rare gift. After all these years, the chance to allow his love to be free, and for them to reign together. A singular opportunity.

Will didn’t want it. 

Why didn’t he want it?

The thought is incensing. Infuriating. Were it not for the attention such a thing would draw, Hannibal would set free his rage upon this place. Destroy the many beautiful artifacts, the likenesses of saints and angels. Even now, even _ now, _ he has placed the sanctity of his memories in the hands of God, despite having no respect for that—that _ thing. _ So quick to turn a blind eye, to refuse his children, to ignore his creations, to turn away from what Hannibal has seen in them since the dawning days of his life.

Humans are animals like any other. Livestock to be consumed. Swine. 

Perhaps it is his failing that he has never once regarded Will like the others; never once considered him to be something so simple as _ human. _ But maybe Will _ is _ human. Maybe Hannibal is wrong, and that keen intelligence and his familiar compassion and cruelty are not the impressions of a life previously lived, but cruel temptations from a capricious God. Perhaps Will himself was a test set out that, once failed, has seen Hannibal fallen once and for all.

He had never imagined he’d find what he found in Will. A solitary life seemed the only option, his sole desire in the absence of his one and only—until that day in a cookie-cutter office, when a vibrant being clad in terrible clothing had lashed out against those who would claim to know his mind and his heart. He had been so familiar then, so irresistible. To know him again, in a new form, a new shape. To reclaim his affection after all this time, and to aid in his awakening. 

Lilith, reborn. 

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he was right, and the cruelty of God and the paradox of space-time has returned them to the moment of their love fulfilled, only to see it lain to waste. To see Hannibal destroyed.

But he will not be destroyed. 

And if he is to live this life, tempted and subsequently disappointed, betrayed and alone, then he will be more cruel and capricious than he has ever been. His retribution will know no end. 

Even for Will.

So he finds a man who is _ just _ close enough to Will to be satisfying, and makes a beacon of his body. A sculpture. A monument to his love, now lost. Places it at the altar that he’d somewhere, somehow, distantly _ hoped _ they might stand before together—

Will is certain to follow him here. They have spoken of this place before. And when he does, he should know. He should know what he has done, the decision he has made, and what has come from it. Even if he may never see the depths of fate and circumstance that have led them here, even if Will never awakens as what Hannibal had so foolishly dreamed of, he knows that part of Will is sure to see it, and part of him will _ know_—the truth, and all its consequences.

* * *

There is a magnetism between them that has always been. From the very beginning, Will has been drawn to him, a desire he cannot categorize or explain. It has pulled him away from the loyalties he’s held all his life—to justice, to the law, to Jack Crawford and his ilk. 

He had previously allowed himself to be used where Jack saw fit, a sharp tool tragically pointed on both ends. But Will had lived an empty, lonely life; all the happiness he had strived for had felt so unattainable, just out of reach. When he caught up to it, regardless, it never ended up being what he’d hoped. 

The emptiness inside him that has always, always longed for company. Someone who could fill that space, fill his mind with song and light, his life with belonging. 

That person had been Hannibal. And oh, his betrayal had hurt more than any loss Will had ever suffered, awakened a rage inside him that, even in his fury, filled up that emptiness. It pulled him into a terrible place of fear and pain, but it was his only way forward. For better or for worse, Hannibal became his reason for—for _ everything. _

That soft siren’s voice calling out to his darkness had been nigh irresistible. Will had run to the edge of their sharp precipice and looked down over the edge, into the abyss, and found the abyss staring longingly back at him.

Will wishes he could say Hannibal pulled him in. But in reality, he was the one who jumped.

And now, the tether between them calls him east, across the roiling Atlantic and her tumultuous currents. In search of the one who, even now, has a hand firmly around Will’s heart, and has left a scar across his gut.

The shadow of the girl who might’ve been their daughter follows him there. In the evenings when the loneliness becomes too much, she lies beside him on the deck of his little boat and stares with him up at the stars. She tells him stories that Abigail Hobbs would never have known—of angels and demons, of gardens and apples, of sacrificial lambs: one of which Abigail herself became.

Will has always been _ other, _ but he has always considered himself human. He knows what he is. He knows _ who _ he is. 

But as the sun rises and Abigail’s image fades, there is a woman that sits beside him and stares out at the waves, and the sunrise bleeds her hair red. She is always gone by the time the sky turns blue, and she never says a word.

* * *

Will stands before the altar and sees the echo of what Hannibal has left for him: a heart made from a man, raw and bleeding. Will doesn’t do anything but stare at the space where it had been, and sit down in the place where Hannibal had stood like he can still sense him there.

Perhaps he _ does _ sense Hannibal, because Will looks up as though he can _ feel _ his presence, follows him into the catacombs without fear. Without hesitation. And in the blackness that has enveloped them, inside the place that Hannibal has been cast to, seething and alone, he hears Will’s voice echo among the bones of long-dead men.

“Hannibal!” 

He stops. Does not answer. Hears his name ricochet in Will’s voice between age-old stone and flickering candles. Hears Will gain momentum, give pursuit, running blindly into the depths of perdition. 

Somewhere in the distance, Will stops. And he is not alone. He warns the age-grizzled Inspector who has pursued him to return to the light, as though Will himself intends to stay shrouded in darkness, follow Hannibal until the ends of the earth if he must.

_ You’re already dead, aren’t you? _Rinaldo Pazzi asks him. 

Yes, he is. 

Because Hannibal gutted Will Graham and left him to bleed out beside their would-be child on his kitchen floor. What emerged from the empty halls of his home was something that unnerves mortal men. Something that moves like a wraith in the imprints of Hannibal’s footsteps, dancing between the shadows of the dead. Here, Hannibal reigns—a creature of light that has been forcibly rehomed to darkness, and has found his belonging as the sole spark among the night. Will has stared into his heart for too long, and though his vision is a wash of rainbow color, and though he has been blinded, he pursues.

He will always feel that damning pull between them; he will always pursue. 

Hannibal feels the heat of Will’s body as he passes, and draws away. Does not touch. Does not tell Will he is there, but Will knows. Will knows. Will has always known.

“I forgive you,” Will whispers, and all of Hell is there to bear witness—to wait with bated breath for their lord and master to answer.

Hannibal does not. _ Can _ not.

He has no use for forgiveness; what he craves most is the heat of Will’s passion and the ice of his determined defiance, expanding and coalescing inside him until there is nothing left of Will’s mortal self but the darker things, the immortal things. The Hellish things.

Forgiveness is a virtue—but even love, in the way they once felt it, was so deep and crushing and all-consuming that it was only ever sin.

And Hannibal is a creature of sin.

Perhaps that is what leads him to his conclusion, in the end—that if he cannot have Lilith, and by extension Will, as they were meant to be, then the rift between them must be mended by nothing short of utter consumption.

* * *

When Abigail is gone and Will is well and truly alone, once Hannibal has left him behind again, Will knows he should go home. He should give up this chase, this anger, this desire. He should free himself from the sloping and beautiful downward spiral staircase into Hades, but he can’t. He can’t, but he knows he should.

Instead he traces his steps backward, into the chapel. Stands before the altar one last time. When he starts forward again, he wades through a river of blood, Acheron incarnate, which carries within it the souls that Hannibal has claimed throughout the duration of his existence.

It may change him. It may very well kill him. But he will follow the river to its source.

There are secrets born in Lithuania that he has to learn before he can lay eyes on Hannibal again, an understanding that waits, desiring to take up residence at the back of his mind. Will goes, because he can do nothing else.

He has to know.

When he comes to the castle, to the gates, to the forest, what emerges from inside him is… other. He moves like he has never moved. Stalks through underbrush, with a certain grace that bursts from inside him. He feels inhuman, until the moment he arrives in the place he seeks.

He stands before the obelisk, the grave marker of a little girl, and is overcome with grief.

She was just a child. 

And perhaps this is the nature of the ferocity that lives inside Hannibal—all-encompassing, both selfish and selfless. In the cold, grim dusk of a miles-wide forest, in the ancestral home and graveyard of the Lecters, Will closes his eyes.

When he opens them, he is with Hannibal. 

He is everything Will remembers. His composed appearance. His clever eyes. His silver tongue. The smile he saves only for Will. In this place, this in-between, Hannibal looks truly pleased to see him. He smiles, even as he speaks of horror, of serpents and painted-glass windows. The memories reflect Hannibal back at him with three faces, all of them identical—but within his eyes, a different facet of his intrinsic self: the healer, the teacher, and the hunter. They all watch Will with the same hunger, even as the memory of him fractures, and Will is left alone.

But the river still yet flows, so he follows. It feels as though he has wrapped himself in the mantle of Hannibal’s darkness. Perhaps it is a shroud. Perhaps it is a coronation robe. Fireflies land in Will’s hair like a crown, and he touches the base of a deadened fountain filled with snails, where a child’s handprint is branded in lichen. 

Will follows a woman who walks in shadow, to a place below the ground. To the source of the flow, and the sound of water. A man, imprisoned. And, too, the woman imprisoned by him.

Inside him, the red-haired wraith stares out from his eyes and sees a sister subjugated. If they can, they will see her freed. They will see the tormentor punished. They will see Mischa avenged. And they will deny Hannibal the pleasure of seeing these things done himself.

It’s so easy. It is so, so easy.

And in that ease comes the realization of truth: Hannibal is no ascendant monster. He is no enlightened being. He is not the creature of Will’s nightmares, nor of his waking dreams. 

Hannibal is just a man.

He is a man who feels all and everything without dilution. What he feels, he expresses. When he loves and when he hates, both consume him. What he despises in the fickle and the rude are qualities that he, in his own way, embodies. The cruelty he delights in is not evil, but his own sense of justice.

He had seen an equal trapped in Will and sought to free him, damn the consequences. It is only now that Will has turned the tides and done the same for Chiyoh that he understands.

He understands that Hannibal will never stop, and he will never yield, and he will never be bested by those still tethered to the ideals of right and wrong, to _ should _ and _ shouldn’t_, or black and white. He understands that this push and pull between them will carry on until one of them puts it to an end. That Hannibal never will, because he delights in the hunt with all his mind and heart and soul.

Will could have ended this. He could have gone home, but he didn’t. He followed the trail that Hannibal has left, the footprints and the corpses, until he has found himself in the lion’s den. One cannot begrudge a predator for killing and eating. It’s not personal; it is simply in their nature. The blame he has laid on Hannibal is not his blame to bear. The Hell that Will has found himself within is not Hannibal’s fault—he brought himself here, and ignored every warning sign along the way. 

But now, there is only one thing left to do.

Will limps along the train tracks in the frozen dark. He feels blood streak down his face, congeal in his hair. He has no belongings, no food, no aid. He has only the name he was born with, the force of his own will, as he follows Hannibal deeper into the depths of perdition. He can’t hate Hannibal for what he’s done. In many ways, the memories make themselves a home inside his bones, and remind him with every forward step that they are just alike. To end this path will leave him empty and alone. No one will ever understand him the way Hannibal does. But no one else beside him will ever understand Hannibal well enough to stop him.

Will is frozen to the soul, never to feel that warmth and belonging again, crushed between moral obligation and the flash of Hannibal’s teeth as he smiles. Whether Lucifer takes the form of a mortal man or an astral being, the only way out of Hell is to face him and emerge victorious.

This is Will’s penance for his sins. It is also his punishment. 

In his mind, the red-haired woman sits astride the raven-feathered stag of his nightmares, poised and prepared for the hunt. She looks comfortable there.

* * *

The situation that unfolds in Florence is not what Hannibal expects. There is satisfaction in playing with Rinaldo Pazzi and ending the chase that has spanned most of his adult mortal life, but finding Jack Crawford waiting below is something of a twist in his plan. Still, plans adapt, and Hannibal is nothing if not adaptive to his environment.

Perhaps there is no hand that can end Hannibal’s life but Will’s. Perhaps that’s why Jack Crawford hesitates for just long enough that Hannibal is able to escape more or less unscathed. Perhaps it’s simply the knowledge that sustains Hannibal that if Jack is near, Will is surely not far behind.

He knows where to go. He goes, and he waits beneath the _ Primavera_, transposing identity into art. He draws until he hears footsteps behind him—the scent of dried blood, the wool of a suit jacket, the faintest traces of sweat. Is able to keep mercifully still as Will sits heavily beside him, close enough to touch. As Will captures his gaze, and is overtaken by a helpless smile. 

The truth spills out of him, because there is nowhere else for it to go. Hannibal is already full with it. “If I saw you every day—forever, Will—I would remember this time.”

He means it. He means nothing _ less _ than the broad span of forever, from the conception of the universe to Judgement Day. This moment seems so long overdue, wrought with pain and affection, that even the past flickers and fades under the weight of it.

Will feels it too. Hannibal can see it in his eyes. 

Every word between them is heavy, chosen carefully. Even the greetings, even the jokes. 

Hannibal’s house of cards collapses when Will can bear it no longer. “I wanted to understand you… before I laid eyes on you again.” A flicker of a smile, which swiftly fades to burning intensity. “I needed it to be… _ clear, _ what I was seeing.”

Inside Will’s gaze is hellfire, smoldering deep and dark. Familiar. 

Hannibal is still. Stone. Unmovable. Does not breathe or blink as he stares at Will, and sees someone else inside him staring back. 

He has to know. “Where does the difference between the past and the future come from?” 

He expects many answers. Before and after Eden, Christ, their separation, their rebirth. He finds himself silent and contemplative when Will meets him evenly, and so softly asks, “Mine?” When Hannibal inclines his head, Will says with parted lips, a flash of teeth, “Before you and after you.”

This moment is spun from the most fragile glass. The most thin and translucent thread of fate. 

“Yours?” Will continues in a breath. “It’s all starting to blur. Mischa. Abigail. Chiyoh.”

The disappointment is swift. Immediate. Altogether unsurprising, no matter how desperately he wishes for something else. 

Will does not remember. These things he speaks of are tied only to this life, this stream of consciousness. He has no tether to their mutual past clinging to the vibrance of his soul. Oh, for a moment, Hannibal had so hoped to reconsider. To give Will one last chance to reveal his open eyes, his memory of a life once lived, a joy once shared years and years ago.

It is not to be. Maybe it was never to be. Maybe what Hannibal sees inside those eyes will stay locked there, never to be released. And if Will bears the guilt for every murder, past and present, that Hannibal has committed, then it is only merciful to put him out of his misery. 

Chiyoh’s gunshot in the courtyard comes, as they say, straight from God. When Hannibal turns and sees him stricken, bore through with lead and lit from the inside with pain and fury—and the knife waiting in Will’s hand—he can’t even bring himself to be angry. Proud, perhaps.

If Lilith _ were _ reincarnate, she could only hope to be so fortunate to be reborn as Will Graham. 

He holds Will one last time under the guise of easing his pain. Holding Will never lasts long enough. Consuming him, though—the memory of that will last as long as the remainder of this cursed mortal life. With it will come acceptance. Forgiveness.

He nearly sneers at the concept as he presses the knife into Will’s hand. “You dropped your forgiveness, Will.” Huffs a breath. “You forgive as God forgives. Would you have done it quickly, or would you have stopped to gloat?”

Will’s voice is wrecked with pain and sharp, panting breaths. “Does God gloat?”

Hannibal gazes at him for a long, quiet moment. Feels fondness. Sadness. Wonders distantly if God is not gloating right now, at the enormity and eternity of his once-favorite’s suffering. At how far he’s fallen. At how he, too, has learned to punish the one he holds most dear. Like father, like son.

“Often,” Hannibal replies softly, and picks up the needle.

* * *

If there is one human being who contains all the most detestable, foul qualities of humanity, Mason Verger is most certainly it.

Will is bleary, bloody, barely cognizant as he is rolled this way and that by Mason’s assistant, Cordell. Dressed and trussed like one of Mason’s prized pigs. Hannibal, himself, is indifferent; whatever Mason may imagine as a fate for him, Hannibal has seen, has _ lived _ far worse. Mason’s horrors are pleasantly imaginative, but for all his iconography-based boasting, he is not as imaginative as God. Suffering on this plane is temporary. Hannibal is confident that, one way or another, he will escape this with reasonable ease when the time is right. He has his faculties about him. 

Will, however, does not. There is a slew of complicated feelings arisen about his consumption of Will being interrupted—but also that, due to the wounds inflicted by his own hands, Will is now unable to properly resist. Or so he believes, until Will rips into Cordell’s face; bares bloody teeth and spits flesh onto a perfect porcelain plate, refusing his assumed subservience. 

Hannibal is not certain he’s understood adoration until this moment. 

Is not sure that he will ever be able to lay a harmful hand upon Will again.

And Mason cannot hurt Will without compromising his own desires, so Hannibal is glad to bear the brunt of his punishment. He fades into the halls of the ruined Lecter Castle as Cordell heats the brand. There is a wing of that place, now ruined as his own, that is dedicated to Will. Half if it bears resemblance to his childhood rooms, the other half to his Baltimore office. He spends time there amongst more pleasant company until the sizzle of burning skin has ceased. 

The horrors they threaten him with are no horror at all. Even the balm of sweet Margot’s presence and cool Alana’s bargains do not faze him. She could never have understood him. No one ever has. Not even his Father.

Only Will. 

And it is really no promise at all when Hannibal says he’ll save him. There was never any other option.

When he rises on prickling limbs and sore muscles, Hell rises with him. Lives become collateral damage, damned by their allegiances. The rage that unfolds from within him is as cold as the night is dark, and it calls for his beloved, distant though they might be from one another. Only Will’s well-being will assure the survival of any in this home—if it can even be called that.

When he enters the makeshift operating amphitheatre and sees Cordell towering over Will, something within him does not snap, but clicks into place. This is what he is—what he has always been. Prideful, wrathful, full of greed and lust and desire. Hannibal is nothing short of Hell incarnate, its captive and its king. 

He leaves Mason Verger to his sister’s vengeance with faith in her fury, leaves Cordell to die as a mess of blood and bone on the floor, and carries Will home.

* * *

When Will wakes, it is to immense hurt—pain, and a notebook bearing the secrets of the universe scrawled onto paper in the form of theoretical physics. A clean shirt. A clean face. An empty house.

As if summoned, Hannibal is there in the doorway: a beautiful shadow. Formidable. 

Will wants him so desperately. And he knows, in that moment, that he may never keep him. Cannot kill him, no—but can no more leash him than put him to an end.

They are at a stalemate. Perhaps one to last forevermore.

Hannibal enters. Sits in his living room chair as though it is a throne, and not a forgotten relic of a better time. “Do we talk about teacups and time and the rules of disorder?”

Inside Will’s soul, his spirit, something is crying. It wants so badly. But Will denies, because he must. The rules of propriety and decency demand that he refuse, even as the auburn-haired woman atop the Ravenstag stares at him with tearstained, accusing eyes. Will ignores her. “The teacup is broken,” he says. Remembers Abigail—too, broken. “It’ll never gather itself back together again.”

There can be no decisive victory between them. He says as much. In Hannibal’s words, a zero-sum game; in Will’s, a lose-lose situation, no matter how victorious and triumphant Hannibal finds them in his mind.

“I miss my dogs,” Will whispers. “I’m not gonna miss you.” The flat look in ochre eyes drives him onward. Will strikes to kill. Anything less is a concession. “I’m not gonna find you. I’m not going to look for you. I don’t wanna know where you are or what you do.” The coup de grâce gets caught in his throat: a terrible, horrendous lie. “I don’t want to think about you anymore.”

Hannibal is gutted. Hollowed out. In that moment, Will knows he has dealt the mutilated shadow of a man a mortal blow. “You delight in wickedness, and then berate yourself for the delight.” It’s soft. Accusatory. Desperate.

“You delight,” Will says. “I tolerate. I don’t have your appetite.” 

It’s like tearing out his own heart. Truly a zero-sum game—in condemning Hannibal’s fractured soul, Will puts the knife through his own. 

At least he won’t have to put the knife through flesh. He’s not sure if he could bear it.

Murmurs, “Goodbye, Hannibal.”

Oh, he waits. The hope is the worst part—the way he lingers in that damned throne for Will to change his mind. Clarify. Conditionalize. 

But he doesn’t.

When Hannibal rises, it’s with clipped wings and a wounded countenance. Cut strings of a human marionette. He waits for Will to guide him; that mercy never comes.

The click of the front door is final.

It’s meant to be freedom, for both of them. Like simple words—_they know. _ Now, he summarizes with _ goodbye. _It’s meant to be benediction. Instead, it hurts. And Will bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. On his living room floor is the shape of the Ravenstag, and a woman with auburn curls. They exsanguinate with him, a red river of his own making.

If Hannibal is the devil, perhaps the devil is not so complicated. One simply has to know where to look to find his heart.

* * *

His beloved is alive.

In that knowledge is a certainty that outlives the pain Will Graham has dealt him tonight. Her cruelty lives inside Will’s heart. Hannibal has seen it. There is no doubt, not anymore.

Oh, it hurts, but he can endure purgatory. He is nothing if not patient.

Their event horizon nears in the form of a sharp cliff. And when it arrives, they will end as they began—destined to fall together, reborn beneath a sky full of stars.


End file.
